


Drops of Reminiscence

by starrylitme



Series: Until we may fall in love [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Another Episode, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Canon Rewrite, Complicated Relationships, Dubious Morality, Established Relationship, Identity Issues, M/M, Memory Related, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Past Relationship(s), Rain, Relationship Discussions, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 18:19:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8633389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrylitme/pseuds/starrylitme
Summary: “You know, I did just remember something,” Komaeda said, and then smiled at him with sharp, hardened eyes. “Your expression just then—it reminded me of Hinata-kun. That’s something else. It’s a little troubling, too.”“You’d rather someone you hate not remind you of someone you liked,” Kamukura replied, averting his gaze. “That’s an expectable response.”“There’s more to it than that!”(DRAE AU where Kamukura and Komaeda wait for the rain to stop, talk a bit about things, and also eat chestnuts. Yeah.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NanakiBH](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NanakiBH/gifts).



> So this was the second fic written for the KomaHina Exchange and as mentioned prior, it takes place in the same universe as Not Tomorrow. It's hardly a direct sequel though. A *lot* of things happened between this fic and that fic, and you might end up with more questions than answers. I will say however that it takes some cues from the Cling in Despair series that I was writing way back when. But the basic idea of that series is just...Despair!KamuKoma. I don't know if I'd say it's standalone, but... Yeah.
> 
> This is supposed to be dated around Chapter 3-ish in DRAE, and it's raining because of the butterfly effect. Or something. Maybe it's because I like rain. I really like rain. Rain is great.
> 
> If you have any burning questions, don't be afraid to ask!! That said, please enjoy all the same!!

As expected, the sky above is darker than usual. Russet clouds swirl above, thundering and darkening. As it rains, the smell’s bitter and unpleasant, perhaps even more so than how it’d be under the usual ‘clear’ sky—but he knows there’d be a substantial few seeing beauty in this nonetheless. As rare as rain is, the intrigue is swiftly washed away as he watches it go on and on.

But, it’s not like there’s anything else going on of remote interest as he waits for the rain to stop.

There is that familiar, frail person rushing up, clutching a plastic bag close as though that’d further shield its contents. There is the jingling of a metal-linked chain, and the wet, sharp thumps of his shoes against the pavement. There is that his breathing was barely audible if still harsh and heavy.

Unsurprisingly, Komaeda only sees the shelter first and heads straight there. Once here, he catches his breath, impulsively giggling in either hysteria or relief—and finally, finally, Komaeda picks up on there being someone else in the shadows.

“Oh,” he says, lightly and with only a slight amount of surprise. “Excuse me, I... I didn’t even _notice_...!”

A crimson gaze narrows as Komaeda trails off. Then Komaeda’s shivering gets worse, until his teeth are clattering. With that one good hand, he tugs harder at the cropped, soaked black jacket that did little for cover.

For no particular reason, he recalls how Komaeda would often tug up the hood of his worn green jacket. He wonders, on a mild level, if Komaeda misses its practicality.

Komaeda’s running his fingers through his hair, heavy with rainwater, trying to squeeze water from the strands so that it drips a little less. His pale fingers almost flushed.

“I-I... I...” Komaeda’s stammering. Raindrops are running down his face. “You’re not...a member of the Resistance, are you?”

Kamukura shoots him a look. He doesn’t move as Komaeda stumbles close, as he takes him in fully, gray-green eyes widening with recognition. He pulls his hand from his hair, adjusting his hold on the bag.

“Oh,” he says, and a smile flicks across his lips. “It’s... It’s just you. How fortunate it is that I encounter you after the misfortune of being caught in that rain.”

“Is that truly how you see this situation?” Kamukura asks dully. “It isn’t, is it?”

“Please don’t misunderstand me,” Komaeda laughed piteously. “I meant what I said—I really am happy that I got to see you, especially under these circumstances. It’s fortunate that it was you. I had wondered where you scuttled off to.”

Kamukura didn’t believe that pathetic smile for a second. He wouldn’t have, even pardoning the particular word choice. Instead his gaze narrowed before he looked elsewhere in disinterest.

“You’re completely dry...” Komaeda went on, lamely. “You really are _luckier_ than I am.”

Kamukura doesn’t even make a sound of acknowledgement. He doesn’t even acknowledge Komaeda at all, even as Komaeda approaches him so that the distance between them is short enough to reach across. He can feel the chill of Komaeda’s body in waves. He can almost feel his continual shaking.

Slowly, but surely, with the clinking of his chain and a soft whine, Komaeda presses into his warm side. Kamukura remains unmoved.

“What are you here for?” Komaeda asks, softly with only a slight shiver to the words themselves. “It’s surely not for me—and I doubt those children interest you...”

“Those children have obtained something of interest to me,” Kamukura says matter-of-factly. “As has that pitiful resistance.”

“ _Eh_?” Komaeda glances up with wide, wide gray-greens. “They both have?”

“You are completely uninvolved,” Kamukura said simply. “So you are not a factor in any of this.”

“You say that so _certainly_...”

He wouldn’t be anything less than certain. No, Komaeda has nothing to do with his plans at all. It is a dismissible coincidence he is here and nothing more.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“Unfortunately after this rain ends, I must be on my way,” Komaeda was saying. “The kids are expecting me, and they hate to be kept waiting but—they _really_ hate it when water gets everywhere. Utsugi-san complains about it being like dealing with a wet dog. But that’s not nearly as bad as she makes it out to be—at least, I don’t think so...”

And now he’s just rambling—it’s a transparent attempt at staving off boredom. The things he says aren’t of any interest at all, but Kamukura does listen all the same. He also focuses on the rain, its irregular taps against the pavement, and the rush of water cutting through the air.

Komaeda sneezes. It’s a light, kitten-like sound.

“Ah, sorry,” he apologizes, softly and insincerely. “It’s going to be troubling if I catch a cold—those kids won’t want me anywhere near them... They might just kill me on the spot, actually, haha. That’s a worrying thought.”

“They won’t kill you,” Kamukura says.

“Oh, are you sure?” Komaeda asks, quirking one brow. “Children are impulsive creatures, you know, and they act on emotions, not rationality. If they simply felt like it, they’ll have me beheaded and stuck on a spike. Or maybe I’ll be used as part of Kemuri-kun’s next big art project. Or Daimon-kun will have me torn into pieces. Or maybe Utsugi-san will. Or _that girl_ , you know, the one related to Towa-san...”

“They’re not going to kill you.”

The way Kamukura says it a second time almost— _almost_ sounds like a promise. Komaeda just smiles faintly, knowing better than to look too deeply into something like that.

“Are you going to protect me if they decide to?” he asks all the same, with a cheeky tone of voice. “Though it must be pretty disgraceful to ask your help in defending myself against children—but, I wouldn’t underestimate them either. They hate _that_ more than anything else.”

Of course they did. That much was clear from just the first broadcast. He didn’t really have one opinion over the other—he just had a mission he needed to fulfill and be done with.

But, part of him—the part where he remembered _her_ —suggested it might be more interesting to wait rather than finishing his business here as soon as possible. Despite himself, Kamukura bristled.

Thunder lowly rumbled from high above.

Komaeda shivered against him, back to rubbing at his arm with his one good hand. His chain tinkled oh so slightly. Komaeda clearly wasn’t expecting a response to his previous statement, given his now blank, fixated stare on the continual downpour.

“I don’t know how they’ll turn out—whether as despair or as hope.” The words are almost sudden and hushed in tone, almost like divulging a secret. “I can make a guess, and I can get a bit of a reading on that one, but—they’re children. Children can be so unpredictable. _She_ said she liked to be—but I knew what to expect from her on a base level. Children, I’m not so sure about. Even _that one_ has the capacity of surprising me by turning into something completely different.”

Kamukura didn’t say anything to that, but all the same, Komaeda laughed, shaking his head.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said. “I’m not emotionally attached to them or anything like that. They’re interesting but I’d rather focus on Komaru-san, you know? She’s shaping up quite admirably already from that meek thing I met. What kind of hope will that normal girl inspire? It must be something else in a situation like this. Caught between adolescence and maturity—Komaru-san truly is a wild card.”

“You say all that but you just see that girl as Naegi Makoto’s sister,” Kamukura said dryly. “How boring. You’re only going to be disappointed when she fails to follow her brother’s footsteps.”

“Ooh, have a bit more faith,” Komaeda replies. “I don’t expect her to follow—I expect her to rise and _lead_.”

“Boring,” Kamukura reaffirms. “She’ll follow her own path and that will be that. It’s not as though you have any attachment to her, either.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” Komaeda murmurs, stroking underneath his mitten. “There’s only one girl I’m truly _attached_ to.”

Kamukura didn’t miss a beat. “You’re revolting.”

“It was a joke, Kamukura-kun!” he chirps cheerfully up at him. “Did you at least feel a twinge of amusement?”

Kamukura’s lack of verbal response was a clear answer. For what it was worth, Komaeda wasn’t shoved off.

So Komaeda just sighs, and leans further into Kamukura and his indifferent warmth.

* * *

The rain still hasn’t ended, and Komaeda’s on the ground as rifles through his bag. He tears a packet open with his teeth, and clicks his tongue at the contents.

“Well, this is troubling...”

“Eating those one-handed is going to be difficult,” Kamukura said, unimpressed.

“Is that your way of offering to help me?” Komaeda asks, beaming and offering him the bag. “You can have some too if you like! I doubt you’ve been eating much!”

Kamukura just stares at the bag, gaze flickering between it and Komaeda’s smile.

With nothing else, he reaches inside and pulls out a chestnut and begins peeling. Komaeda, watching those long fingers neatly pick apart the layers, hums with awe.

“You know,” Komaeda starts conversationally. “There was a boy I knew, with hair that reminded me of a chestnut.”

Kamukura doesn’t even pause in his peeling.

“He was insecure and indirect and above all else an absolutely average person in every regard, but,” Komaeda sighs. “For some reason, I found myself fond of him all the same. I might have even been attached to him. Though, if someone else were to describe my feelings, they might say something along the lines of that I _liked_ him, perhaps. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

Kamukura popped the peeled nut into his mouth, chewing and swallowing.

“I still think of him from time to time, though I’ve no delusions of seeing him again,” Komaeda says. “That’s perfectly fine. He was unimportant and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I didn’t even feel affected when I learned of his death. Of course, I perhaps had already been in despair by then. Perhaps.”

“You still deny you’re in despair,” Kamukura mutters, peeling another nut. “You really are boring. You’re also stubborn, it seems. How much despair have you caused?”

“It’s all for the sake of hope. I already told you that, you know,” Komaeda mumbles with almost childish irritation, cheeks puffed out and everything. Kamukura wondered if that was really a result of the children’s influence.

“I don’t believe it,” he said. “No matter how I analyze it, you give off the aura of someone in absolute despair.”

“You’ve analyzed in more than one way? You must’ve been really bored then.”

His initial laughter at the idea trails off when Kamukura hands him a peeled nut. Expression dulling, Komaeda only briefly glanced up at him before eating off his hand, wrapping his lips around the very tips of those elegant fingers. Komaeda pulls back, chewing, with a wide, impish grin all the while.

“Thank you,” he says almost sweetly as he swallows, as Kamukura just stares at his fingertips shiny with saliva. “Ka _mu_ ku _ra_ -kun.”

Somehow, it’s the use of his name that has Kamukura perking up. His hand clenched into a tight fist even as his impassive face gave nothing away. And, with only a slight pause, he retrieves another chestnut from the bag. He peels the next like nothing changed.

“I,” Komaeda says, as though he’s short of breath with the very letter. “I don’t think we’ll ever be intimate ever again.”

It’s like Kamukura didn’t even hear him.

“It’s not because I no longer have interest in that sort of thing, or because I just won’t have the time for it but,” Komaeda pauses, humming thoughtfully for a moment before resuming, “It’s complicated, I suppose? Wow, I’m really making this sound like a break-up speech, aren’t I? I really don’t want you to misunderstand me.”

“I wouldn’t,” Kamukura says. It almost sounds like there should’ve been a huff, but of course there wasn’t. Of course not. “Your meanings and intentions are dully clear.”

“Ehehe, you really think so?” Komaeda asks before laughing up at him. “But I wonder about that! You’re the only one who’d say such things and—well, you’re not the most honest person I know. You are blunt at times, yes, but a lot of the time you’re just impossible to read. You disgust me, even now—but you’ve always disgusted me. Everything about you disgusts me.”

Kamukura bit the next nut in half, neatly and perfectly like the clean slice of a sharpened knife.

“I say that—but shouldn’t I also follow that up with ‘I still like you though’ or something? Haha! I really have no idea! It’s—it’s just so complicated, I suppose!!”

Kamukura ate the second half without missing a beat.

“You know, I...”

Kamukura peels another chestnut.

“I really...”

Kamukura hands it to him. Shuffling so that the bag’s tucked under his arm, Komaeda takes it and tosses it into his mouth.

“I really kind of hate you,” he mutters, chewing noisily and gracelessly. “Sometimes I hate you more than I hate her—sometimes...”

He nearly chokes, but he just smacks his chest a few times and swallows with gasping breath.

“Ugh,” Komaeda groans, tears stinging his eyes. “That was rough—I really don’t care for chestnuts at _all_. For something to be that troublesome and tedious...!”

There was a flash of lightning.

“But maybe it’s just what I deserve, still, that’d be a really _terrible_ way to go...” Komaeda sighs. “As if my life isn’t already enough of a sickening parody.”

The sudden bitterness and bite to his tone did have his attention for a moment. And Komaeda... Komaeda glared at the ground with such resentment that it was something else. It’d been a long time since such animosity was displayed so openly.

But the moment passed.

Once Komaeda noticed his staring, that insipid smile hurriedly returned.

Something pulled at the perfectly straight line that was Kamukura’s lips. Something that Kamukura didn’t care to think about.

~~That’s what he told himself.~~

“Anyway,” Komaeda says, turning away with an irritatingly casual air. He’s scooting away, keeping a respectable distance. There’s the slightest bit of twitch to Kamukura’s fingers and of course Komaeda doesn’t notice. “The rain should stop pretty soon, I think.”

It should. But it’ll still last for a while.

“What were we talking about?” Komaeda asks, so innocently that it sounded sincere. “I, ah, seem to have forgotten. I just can’t remember...”

“It didn’t matter,” Kamukura said, simply and sharply.

“Oh, I see,” Komaeda replied, calmly and smilingly. “If you say so.”

Kamukura didn’t say anything.

* * *

In fact, the two of them were silent for a while. Just when Kamukura might’ve predicted the rest of their time together would be in silence, Komaeda spoke up again.

“I don’t think this is the last time we’ll see each other. It’s just a feeling, but I believe we’ll see each other again. I wonder how much will have changed by then?” Komaeda almost chuckles, but instead, he just exhales. “I... How certain are you of what the future will be like?”

“She’s dead,” Kamukura said. “I expect the world will stabilize soon.”

“How boring,” Komaeda says. “Just like that? That’s not enough. Despair has yet to fully root and blossom. How are we supposed to get a radiant, all-encompassing hope without _that_?”

Paying no attention to those swirling gray-greens, Kamukura asks, “Were we to attain that fantastical hope you yearn for—what do you think you’ll do?”

“Huh? Strange question.” But Komaeda did seem to think it over seriously, shutting his eyes tight as he considered, “Maybe... I’ll die? Or kill myself?”

There’s a moment of silence that drags on, and Komaeda turns back to stare up at him. His eyes are wide and inquisitive like a curious bird’s.

“What will _you_ do? Will you join me?”

Kamukura glares, crimson gaze narrowing sharply and dangerously. “Are you _inane_?”

Komaeda just smiles.

“You should be able to figure that on your own, Kamukura-kun,” he says cheerfully, and he feigns sheepishness. “But it’s so unlike you to insult me so _directly_. Did I really annoy you just then? That’s really despairingly impressive.”

Kamukura doesn’t even blink or even twitch. “Shut up.”

“Ooh, that’s rude!” Komaeda gasped, truly in awe. “I really have annoyed you, haven’t I?! I don’t even think _she’s_ gotten you like this before! Should I feel honored or afraid?”

It wouldn’t be difficult to snap that thin neck, to crush it and that grotesque leash with just one tight grip. It wouldn’t be hard to rip his heart out of his chest, to shatter his skull. These thoughts are not satisfying ones to have.

If anything, anything at all—he’d say they were _irritating_.

Boring. It’d be so mind-numbingly boring and pointless to just kill him so easily.

~~He didn’t want to anyway—~~

It didn’t matter anyway.

“You know, I did just remember something,” Komaeda said, and then smiled at him with sharp, hardened eyes. “Your expression just then—it reminded me of Hinata-kun. That’s something else. It’s a little troubling, too.”

“You’d rather someone you hate not remind you of someone you liked,” Kamukura replied, averting his gaze. “That’s an expectable response.”

“There’s more to it than that!” Komaeda exclaimed, but then he paused, realizing, “I didn’t say Hinata-kun was the one I liked. Did I mention him by name before around you? I don’t remember...”

“I shouldn’t have to explain something apparent,” Kamukura said. “If your memory is really so fickle, why would you rely on it even a little?”

“That’s an insensitive question...” Komaeda mutters, put out. “I don’t even know how to answer that. I’m just offended.”

Kamukura just stares at him, crimson gaze piercing. Komaeda doesn’t seem affected at all, except in how he slightly adjusts the bag in his arms, and crinkles it by holding it closer to his chest.

The rain’s softer now and alleviating. There’s still rumbling thunder and brief flashes in the clouds.

“I’ve no delusions I’ll see him again,” Komaeda says, so softly the words could have crumbled instantaneously. “But I’m sure we’ll meet again, at least. I hope that by then, the sky is different. I’ve grown bored of this one.”

For what it was worth, he agreed with that particular sentiment. There really was nothing interesting about the perpetually tainted, reddened heavens, nor the poisonous atmosphere. The rain was clearing, light filtering through—for once, he could see the hints of gold in the rays.

Then, Komaeda noticed the rain stopped completely and pushed himself back onto this feet.

“Ah, now’s as good a time as ever to head back,” he noted before turning back with a smile. “I’ll see you...”

Said smile dropped once he noticed Kamukura was no longer anywhere in sight.

“I’ll see you later,” Komaeda blandly finished, features blank. “Perhaps.”

With that, he turned and made his way down the cold, cracked road, chain tinkling all the while. He was probably going to have to thoroughly dry himself off—maybe warm up, too, before he really did get sick. All the same, he couldn’t help but smile at the thought of what the future may bring.

He still couldn’t be sure, but he hoped for something, at least.

Kamukura watched him from afar, at his frail, waning figure. There was a remnant of a vaguely remembered yearning, but he brushed it off. He turned to be on his own way, and—

_“I’ll see you, Komaeda.”_

He pauses, for just a moment, and then shakes his head and moves on.


End file.
